The 7th Step
by robin baby
Summary: When he was a child, Mary told Dean angels were watching over him. She also told him an angel would always listen if he needed to talk. Dean had forgotten that. Until after they lost Cas. One-shot. Inspired by a song called 'Angel on the Stairs.'
1. The 7th Step

**A/N:** This was quickly written, and possibly it's cheesier than I like myself, but sometimes needs must, am I right? It's un-betaed, so I apologize for typos and mistakes. Anything too gross, do let me know!

**Disclaimer:** _Supernatural_ belongs to Kripke and the CW, the song is by b.o.s.s. Mine's just their marriage.

Enjoy, and do share your thoughts with me, whatever they are!

ooo

_The 7th Step__  
><em> 

There is something Mary Winchester used to tell her oldest son, something he realizes he'd forgotten about only after they've lost Cas.

ooo

At age four, Dean Winchester had a different view of the world than most (all) children of his age. His parents did their very best to bring him up normal, create a normal life and a normal reality for him. If you'd asked any grown-up who knew them – and by that I mean knew what Mary was … or had been, as she hoped – they would have shared the opinion that the Winchesters succeeded perfectly, at the very least remarkably well, in this. 

When Dean woke up scared in the middle of the night and sneaked into his parents' bedroom with little trembling breaths, Mary would scoop him up and carry him back to his own bed and stroke his hair for a while, telling him it was a nightmare, it wasn't real, there were no monsters in the dark under the bed or in the corner beside the wardrobe. 

John told his son ghost stories, and stories about mummies and witches, until Mary scolded him for frightening the boy, but John's scary stories were always funny too, making Dean giggle through his mother's admonitions. 

Mary and John taught Dean to be careful crossing the road, don't play with fire or sharp things (Mary always locked everything away), don't talk to strangers and don't tease dogs too much. 

Perfectly normal parents, the neighbours would have told you, and it would have taken another hunter to guess how much it cost Mary to not show Dean how to draw a devil's trap, or how to defend himself with a knife. Not to teach him that salt wasn't just for cooking and having a bottle of holy water in the house had little to do with faith. 

She didn't do it because she'd promised herself that her son would live a normal life. 

But Dean saw it all anyway. I couldn't tell you exactly _what_ he saw. Perhaps it was more what he felt. 

Like at night, when his mother held him, he felt that tiny flutter of her heart, the brief moment of wonder if there _was_ something in the house. She quelled it at once, told herself more than her son that it was just a nightmare, and listened closely through her own, quiet humming, for any tell-tale sounds, and scanned every inch of Dean's room for a shadow out of place while she sang The Beatles to lull her boy back to sleep. 

It was invisible and she hid it well, but Dean, in some way, noticed anyway. So he knew, always, that there was more to the world than meets the naked eye, and he knew that those hidden things were evil. 

John's stories didn't scare him because he knew that if he ever met a real ghost, it wouldn't be a set of sad black eyes in a spotless blanket and say _boo_. 

So when his parents told him that he would soon get a baby brother, Dean went very quiet at first. One of the neighbours told John and Mary it was because he had to adjust to the idea of not being the only one anymore, but in reality Dean was deeply worried. 

There were dark, evil things in the world, and what if one of those came to hurt the little brother he didn't have yet? Wasn't there any way to fight these monsters, he wondered, to protect from them? 

He didn't know, but he thought about it long and hard, sitting quietly by himself. Until Mary scooped him up in her arms and said, 'I've made apple pie, honey, why don't we have some?' He could feel the swell of her belly as she carried him downstairs, and wondered some more. 

After a while, in the kitchen, with plates of warm pie and glasses of milk, Mary stroked her son's hair, smiling. It was a little sad, perhaps, her smile, although she tried to make it bright. She knew Dean had something else on his mind than not being the centre of his parents' attention at ever moment anymore, she simply knew. So she told him – 

'You know, my darling, there are angels watching over you. And when there's something that scares you, or worries you, and you don't want to tell us about it, then there'll always be one around who'll listen, an angel. You can tell him anything. He'll always be there, and he'll always listen.' 

So that night, Dean went quietly to sit beside his old crib, which was to be his new baby brother's soon, and closed his eyes. He tried hard to hear something, or feel something, _the angel._ 'Are you there?' he whispered into the darkness of the room, which was soft, warm, and quiet. There was no reply, but Dean was grown-up enough to know that if you were speaking to an angel, it was unlikely that you'd get a response, at least not in words. But that didn't mean the angel wasn't there. 

He told the angel how he was worried that the many dark things he _knew_ were there would do his little brother harm. He wasn't sure about Mom and Dad … they _had_ to know all this, right? They were grown-ups after all, and they knew everything. Were they doing something? Did they know what to do? 

For a while, then, Dean sat in silence. Then he whispers, 'Please watch over my little brother too.'

ooo 

Today, Dean is sitting in a dark motel room, sleepless, listening to what little life there is outside at this hour, and Sam's irregular, laboured nightmare-breathing. He wonders briefly if he should wake him, but then decides against it. It's not that bad, and in their lives, sometimes troubled rest is better than no rest. 

So he keeps sitting and staring at the darkness, deep gray shapes and slivers of weak light where the curtains let it through. 

No idea why this old memory of home came to him tonight of all nights. It's been a week since Cas died, since Bobby's house burned. Bobby's in the room next to theirs, probably reading. He hasn't slept much over the last couple of days, but how should he? He lost his whole life with that house. Books, phone numbers, addresses. Pictures of Karen. 

Dean rubs his tired eyes and thinks about sleep, but it won't find him tonight either, he knows that. There are different kinds of tiredness, even of the physical kind. _Too tired to sleep_ always sounds like a bit of a sad-song-platitude, something that only exists in literature, but that's only until you experience it, and Dean's too tired to sleep right now. 

It's this memory that keeps him awake, of Mary telling him there'll always be someone listening, always an angel you can talk to, my darling. 

He can't remember what he imagined angels to be like as a child. He knows he didn't believe in them for the better part of his life. Now, he thinks of Cas. No more need to imagine, or wonder. Where did he take that faith from, as a child, the blind faith that something invisible, silent, intangible, was there nonetheless? Now, he doesn't even need that kind of faith anymore, because he _knows_. He knows they're there. And they're dicks, mostly. If they listen to your prayers they don't care at best, mock you at worst. 

Only Cas. After those first years, the months before Sammy's birth and the first few years after (and especially after Mary's death), the darknesses and evils of the world became too real for Dean to keep talking to that angel, Mom's angel, who always listened. He stopped doing it, but not for good, and that, Dean realizes only now. 

Because Cas always listened, and he always came. Dean doesn't know if Mary believed what she told him when he was four, but if she did, then Cas was the angel she believed in, although she never knew it. 

Perhaps it's the lateness (earliness?) of the hour and the exhaustion, but suddenly Dean wishes he could talk to Cas, just talk, and know he was listening. No matter if he was tied up, busy, fighting some other battle somewhere, as long as he listened. _As long as he was there_. 

Dean sits motionless for a long while and thinks that this is so ironic, in a way that makes his throat tighten, and all that's happened is just too much, too much to be real, to make sense anymore. He's felt like he couldn't take another step so many times in his life, but this time it feels heavier. It's loss that makes it so very heavy, and knowing for certain that Mary's angel, Dean's angel, _isn't_ there, and won't listen, because he can't. 

Finally, Dean gets up and quietly goes to the door and outside onto the landing. Their rooms are on the first floor, his and Sam's is right at the corner of the building, their door facing the stairs that lead down to the parking lot. The air is damp and cool from rain, the only sound is cars going by on the highway not far off. 

Dean slowly sits down on the top stair, runs his fingers through his hair and sighs. 'Hell, what does it matter,' he says after a while, quietly. 'I'm not letting you off that easily, buddy. You'll have to listen to me anyways.' He takes a deep breath, just briefly wondering if he's finally losing it, and begins.

_Fin_

_Thi__s story was inspired by a song I heard a while ago at a local concert. It's called "Engl aaf da Stöign," which is Upper Palatinate dialect, a variety of Bavarian and thus German, and means 'Angel on the Stairs.' For anyone who's interested, go to chapter two for the lyrics in dialect, German, and English.*  
><em> 

_One of the musicians at the concert, who has also co-written the song, told us that the song was in turn inspired by a novel, Frank McCourt's _Angela's Ashes_, and a little story therein. Frank's father tells him in the book that his little brother had been brought by an angel, a seraph, and left on the seventh step of the staircase in their house. Frank then becomes quite fascinated with the angel and names him 'The Angel on the Seventh Step.' In the song "Engl aaf da Stöign," the speaker wishes that he had such an angel as well so he could simply talk to him.  
><em> 

* Translation by me. With the English version I decided to be as literal as possible, even though in places nicer-sounding translations would've been possible. I made footnotes where my poetic sensibilities just wouldn't let me be literal. ;) 


	2. Angel on the Stairs  Lyrics 3x

_Upper Palatinate dialect  
><em>

Wenn a Nacht niat aafhearn wüll

Wenn da Nebl mit mia spült

Wenn d'Angstkrouha durch's Fenster einaflöing

Höit ich gern an Engl aaf da Stöing

Wenn si a Winter um mi schlöißt

Und alles, wos in mir lebt, eigfröißt

Wenn böise Tram nu Kinder kröing

Höit ich gern an Engl aaf da Stöing

An Engl aaf da Stöing

Wöi in dem Bouch iwa den Boum

Der si in an hoartn Leben zrechtfinnan mou

An Engl aaf da Stöing, der oin zouhurcht einfach so

Dem ma halt sei Herz aasschien ka

Und wenn i merk, ich bin alloi

Und zum Redn hob ich grod koin

Und mia is vielleicht zum Böign

Höit ich gern an Engl aaf da Stöing

Wenn's niat so lafft woi's laffn soll

Wenn i bei jedm zwoatn Schritt hifall

Und wenn selbst d'Hoffungsschimmer löign

Höit ich gern an Engl aaf da Stöing.

_German_

Wenn eine Nacht nicht aufhören will

Wenn der Nebel mit mir spielt

Wenn die Angstkrähen durchs Fenster hereinfliegen

Hätte ich gern einen Engel auf der Treppe

Wenn sich ein Winter um mich schließt

Und alles, was in mir lebt, einfriert

Wenn böse Träume noch Kinder bekommen

Hätte ich gern einen Engel auf der Treppe

Einen Engel auf der Treppe

Wie in dem Buch über den Jungen

Der sich einem harten Leben zurechtfinden muss

Einen Engel auf der Treppe, der einem zuhört einfach so

Dem man eben sein Herz ausschütten kann

Und wenn ich merke, ich bin allein

Und zum Reden hab ich gerade keinen

Und mir ist vielleicht zum Weinen

Hätte ich gern einen Engel auf der Treppe

Wenn es nicht so läuft wie es laufen soll

Wenn ich bei jedem zweiten Schritt hinfalle

Und wenn selbst die Hoffnungsschimmer lügen

Hätte ich gern einen Engel auf der Treppe

_English_

When a night just won't end

When the shadows2 play with me

When fearsome birds3 come flying through the window

I wish there were an angel on the stairs4

When a winter closes in around me

And everything that lives inside of me, freezes

When bad dreams multiply7

I wish there were an angel on the stairs

An angel on the stairs

Like in that book about the boy

Who has to get by in a hard life

An angel on the stairs who listens, just like that

Who you can just pour out your heart to

And when I realize I'm alone

And there's no one there to talk to

And perhaps I feel like breaking down16

I wish there were an angel on the stairs

When things don't turn out like they should18

When with every other step I stumble

And when every ray of hope's a lie20

I wish there were an angel on the stairs

_Literal_:

2 When the mist plays with me

3 When the fear-crows …

4 I would like to have an angel on the stairs

7 When bad dreams even have children

16 And perhaps I feel like crying

18 When things aren't going as they should be going

20 When even rays of hope lie


End file.
